The rival Koreas agreed today to hold senior-level talks this week in Seoul, a breakthrough of sorts after Pyongyang’s recent threats of nuclear war and Seoul’s vows of counterstrikes.
The two-day meeting starting Wednesday will focus on stalled cooperation projects, including the resumption of operations at a jointly-run factory park near the border in North Korea that was the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement until Pyongyang shut the border and pulled out its workers this spring during a period of heightened tensions that followed its February nuclear test.
The details were ironed out in a nearly 17-hour negotiating session by lower-level officials. It was the first such meeting of its kind on the Korean Peninsula in more than two years and took place at the village of Panmunjom on their heavily armed border, where the armistice ending the three-year Korean War was signed 60 years ago next month. That truce has never been replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula technically at war.
The agreement to hold the talks was announced in a statement early today by South Korea’s Unification Ministry. North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, also reported the agreement.
Dialogue at any level marks an improvement in the countries’ abysmal ties. The last several years have seen North Korean nuclear tests, long-range rocket launches and attacks blamed on the North that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.
The meeting Wednesday will also include discussions on resuming South Korean tours to a North Korean mountain resort, the reunion of separated families and other humanitarian issues, officials said. The issue most crucial to Washington, however — a push to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons — isn’t set to be discussed.
While there was broad agreement, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said in a statement, sticking points arose over the delegation heads and the agenda. Seoul will send its top official for inter-Korean affairs while Pyongyang said it would send a senior-level government official, without elaborating.
North Korea said the two sides would additionally discuss how to jointly commemorate past inter-Korean statements, including one settled during a landmark 2000 summit between the countries’ leaders, civilian exchanges and other joint collaboration matters, according to the South Korean ministry’s statement .
While it wasn’t immediately clear who’ll lead the North Korea side, a minister-level summit between the Koreas has not happened since 2007.
Analysts express wariness about North Korea’s intentions, with some seeing the interest in dialogue as part of a pattern where Pyongyang follows aggressive rhetoric and provocations with diplomatic efforts to trade an easing of tension for outside concessions.
Pyongyang is trying to improve ties with Seoul because it very much wants dialogue with the United States, which could give the North aid, ease international sanctions and improve its economy in return for concessions, said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korea studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.
Nuclear matters won’t be on the table, Kim said, because Pyongyang wants issues related to its pursuit of atomic weapons resolved through talks with Washington or in broader, now-stalled international disarmament negotiations.
Pyongyang, which is estimated to have a handful of crude nuclear devices, has committed a drumbeat of acts that Washington, Seoul and others deem provocative since Kim Jong Un took over in December 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.
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